Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 860

Chapter 860: Changes over changes(2)

“What is this bullshit?” Tiberius snapped, his lip curling into a sneer as he tossed the parchment down onto the desk, though he did not quite let go of it.

His fingers still clutched its edge as though unsure whether to fling it into the fire or keep it close. “A fucking drunk in a piss-reeking tavern could come up with something better.”

He leaned back, exhaling sharply through his nose, but his eyes stayed locked on the paper, betraying the curiosity gnawing beneath his scorn.

Of course, not all of it was horseshit. Some parts, if he dared admit, felt disturbingly coherent. That was what unsettled him most.

Across the desk, Lord Julian gave the faintest shake of his head. His one good eye regarded the boy with the weariness of a tutor correcting a dull pupil.

“I thought I had taught you better in these years,” the spymaster murmured, his voice a rasp of reproach. “I am… appalled.”

With deliberate calm, he reached for the decanter and poured another measure into his cup. Wine gurgled low and dark. The bastard stiffened. This was the second refill, and in five years of cohabiting with the old ghost, he had never seen him drink more than a sip. The sight unsettled him more than the info on the parchment.

“I hope,” Tiberius pressed, leaning forward, “that you’re not about to spin me that tired old saying of yours. ‘Even in a lie you find some truth’? Spare me. My elder brother was always drunker than a sailor and buried half his wit between whore thighs. As far as anyone knows, he rotted from the pox caught off some plague-ridden girl.”

Julian’s smile vanished like a shutter closing.

“In this case,” he said,continuing with the same momentum of a river, “there is no falsehood to search for truth in. Because there is no falsehood at all.”

Tiberius blinked. The laughter he had half-prepared shriveled in his throat. “What because he wears a mask now? Because some bumpkin thought they glimpsed a patch of black skin under his collar, you suddenly call it sorcery? No. He caught the plague. That’s all.”

“It makes more sense when you pair it with the other reports.”

“Magic doesn’t exist,” Tiberius barked again, louder this time, as if sheer volume could make it so.

But Julian did not flinch. He set down his cup, leaned forward, and said in a voice colder than the grave:

“It does.”

Tiberius froze.

Magic did not exist…

Julian continued, his tone like iron dragged across stone. “After the battle with the raiders, your elder brother grew… fascinated by the beasts they loosed in their vanguard. Creatures that bled wrong, fought wrong, died wrong. He captured one of the shamans who drove them, kept him alive. And from the looks of it, he took a liking to his services.”

Tiberius forced a scoff, though it rang hollow in the chamber. “How would you know that? Mavius wouldn’t be so sloppy. Not him. Not if what you say is true.”

“Sloppy?” Julian’s thin smile returned, humorless. “No. But men must eat. Shamans need materials for their rites. Traces are left, coins, movements, whispers, goods delivered under shadow. You follow enough of them, you smell the rot. You pull on one thread, and the whole cloth comes undone.”

His sigh that followed was long, weary like a man confessing not revelation but inevitability. “Last year, Mavius was dying. The sickness had claimed his lungs, his blood, his bowels. Any other man would have been carrion within a week. The physicians’ reports I intercepted all said the same: there was no path to survival. And then…”

Julian’s fingers tapped once on the parchment. “Then, miraculously, he lived. He rose from the brink. Days later, the heir to the rebel province was dead, sudden as a struck ox. The funeral was rushed, hushed. Too quickly handled.

The boy after all had a birth mark on his shoulder…that must have been hard to hide”

Tiberius swallowed. His grip on the parchment tightened.

“And then,” Julian went on, his good eye narrowing, “the Imperator appeared again. Iron mask bolted to his face, like a new skin. Patches of blackened skin on his arms, his neck.

The pox does not vanish in a night, boy. Nor does death turn aside so meekly.”

Julian’s voice lowered, each word carrying the weight of centuries. “Magic exists, Tiberius. It always has. When Vivrius ventured ahead of the Finger to expand the empire, it was not only barbarian hordes he crushed. It was filth of another kind. He cleansed the land so well that only two centuries later, whelps like you believe it a myth.”

He refilled his cup again , his third, and his hand trembled slightly as he did so.

“Now the rot stirs once more. And this time, it is not some nameless shaman in a swamp. It is a prince of the blood. Your brother. The Whore Prince will not waste it. He will wield it. And when he marches south, it will be no ordinary war he brings with him.”

Julian raised the wine in a silent toast. His eye gleamed like a shard of obsidian.

That,at least, was the part of the report

Tiberius found believable. Why not? The Old Lion was dead, carried to the pyre, and with him the last bastion of the elder generation.

The youngest of them now wore the mantle of an empire that would chew him to the bone and spit out the husk. If ever there was a time when invasion seemed due, it was now.

“The dungeons of the Red Rose have been… quiet of late,” Julian murmured, breaking his silence with words that hung heavy in the chamber.

Tiberius frowned. “Quiet? What do you mean?”

“I mean emptied.”

The bastard’s eyes widened. “That cannot be.”

He all but laughed in disbelief, though the sound came strangled. “There is no way my brother would be so stupid as to flaunt sorcery under his own roof. The church would denounce him, the high lords would rise with steel in hand. He would not risk it.”

Julian’s expression did not flicker. He simply sipped his wine and set the cup down with careful precision. “And yet.”

Tiberius shook his head, appalled. “No. They would never serve a man marked by such corruption.”

“They won’t,” Julian agreed, his voice low as a knife unsheathed in the dark. “Not for long. His condition has already put cracks in his mask. I doubt Mavius sees far ahead anymore. The hunger that drives him now is immediate. Desperate. Short-sighted.”

His good eye locked onto Tiberius, unblinking. “Better for us.”

A chill crawled up the younger man’s spine, though he forced himself to lean forward, drumming his fingers on the desk as if weighing strategy

. “Then the course is clear. Mavius is the strongest contender for the throne. We reveal what we know, spread the word of his corruption, and strike when he marches south. We take the Finger from behind, cut his army from supply while deep in enemy lands. Mesha will crush him from the front.”

Julian nodded once, as if granting a student partial credit. But his eye betrayed something colder: disdain. “That won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“The Finger cannot be plucked like a ripe fruit. Its garrisons are seasoned, its walls carved from rock. Even from the rear it is a fortress. More than that—” he leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper, “—the nobles I still have contact with will not raise banners without reward. They will demand security of success. They will not gamble their houses on whispers of sorcery and the command of a bastard prince.”

Tiberius bristled. The word stung, though he knew it was true.

Julian continued without mercy. “A rebellion without overwhelming assurance dies six times in eight. And corpses, rebels and bastards alike,make poor kings.”

Tiberius let out a long breath, forcing his temper down. “Then what? If not rebellion, if not a strike at his back, what do you propose?”

Julian steepled his fingers over the parchment. “We wait. We watch. We let the game unfold, and when the pieces shift, we move to seize what cards fortune deals us. A gambler who places coin too early leaves the table broke. Better to wait until the dice are cast.”

The bastard grimaced. Patience, always patience. But something in Julian’s tone told him resistance was pointless. “And who do you reckon will win, then?”

Julian’s single eye narrowed. “Without Marthio, Mesha limps. The Red Lion was the sword-arm of their cause, and his absence will be felt. But…” His voice lingered light. “Their southern diplomacy has borne fruit. Allies from across the land of the South. If their Fox marches north in time…”

He let the thought trail, but his meaning was clear.

“…then it would not be unthinkable for the young Imperator’s corpse to be buried under the banners of his enemies. Or, just as easily, for him to return crowned in triumph once more.”

He leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight, and poured the last of the decanter into his cup.

“In the end,” Julian murmured, voice soft but iron-bound, “the scales are even. A single coin may decide which side crashes into the dirt and which side seizes the world. And we—” he raised his glass, “—will be the coin after the bet is made.

Patience beats all my boy.”